by Ron Chernow
That Martha Washington was made of stern stuff soon grew evident as she pitched in with good-natured energy. One observer left this touching vignette of her at work:I never in my life knew a woman so busy from early morning until late at night as was Lady Washington, providing comforts for the sick soldiers. Every day, excepting Sunday, the wives of the officers in camp, and sometimes other women, were invited . . . to assist her in knitting socks, patching garments, and making shirts for the poor soldiers when material could be procured. Every fair day she might be seen, with basket in hand and with a single attendant, going among the keenest and most needy sufferers and giving all the comforts to them in her power .32
Her selfless, devoted style reminded one admiring Frenchman “of the Roman matrons of whom I had read so much and I thought that she well deserved to be the companion and friend of the greatest man of the age.”33 By and large Martha Washington wasn’t overtly political, yet she shared her husband’s firm commitment to the cause, writing to Mercy Warren, “I hope and trust that all the states will make a vigorous push early this spring ... and thereby putting a stop to British cruelties.”34
The wives of several generals stayed at Valley Forge that winter—including the flirtatious Caty Greene, the amusing but increasingly obese Lucy Knox, and the elegant Lady Stirling, accompanied by her fashionable daughter, Lady Kitty—and tried to lighten the dismal mood. Washington was especially beguiled by Lady Kitty, who requested a lock of his hair. These women dispensed with dancing and card playing as inappropriate to such mournful times and settled for quiet musical evenings where people took turns singing; tea and coffee replaced more potent beverages. That February, on Washington’s forty-sixth birthday, a little levity was allowed as he was entertained by a fife and drum corps.
To relieve residual gloom several months later, Washington allowed junior officers to stage his favorite play, Cato, before a “very numerous and splendid audience.” 35 Written by Joseph Addison, this classic tale told of a Roman statesman, Cato the Younger, who had defied the imperial sway of Julius Caesar and committed suicide rather than submit to tyranny. No longer able to ransack British history for heroes, many patriots turned to classical history for inspiration. Ancient Rome in its republican phase provided uplifting examples, while its decline and fall into despotism offset them with cautionary tales. Washington identified with the stern code of honor and duty in ancient Rome, taking Cato as a personal model. He had seen the play performed several times in Williamsburg and he frequently quoted it. One of his stock phrases—“Thy steady temper . . . can look on guilt, rebellion, [and] fraud . . . in the calm lights of mild philosophy”—was plucked from the play.36 Other treasured epigrams included “ ’Tis not in mortals to command success / But we’ll do more . . . we’ll deserve it,” a commentary on the fickle power of fate and how we must acquit ourselves nobly despite it, and “When vice prevails and impious men bear sway, / The post of honour is a private station.”37 The rhetoric of Cato saturated the American Revolution. Two of its most famous lines, one from Nathan Hale, the other from Patrick Henry, derived from the play: “What pity is it / That we can die but once to serve our country” and “It is not now a time to talk of aught / But chains or conquest, liberty or death.”38
During this Valley Forge winter Washington conquered his initial misgivings about Lafayette and embraced him as his most intimate protégé. In late November, in Gloucester, New Jersey, Lafayette spearheaded a party of four hundred men in a surprise raid on a Hessian detachment, leading to twenty enemy deaths versus only one American casualty. Washington admired the Frenchman’s swashbuckling courage. No longer just another foreign nobleman to be tolerated, Lafayette was rewarded with command of a division. He knew he had attained a unique place in Washington’s heart. “I see him more intimately than any other man,” he boasted to his father-in-law. “. . . His warm friendship for me . . . put[s] me in a position to share everything he has to do, all the problems he has to solve, and all the obstacles he has to overcome.”39
Washington found irresistible this young Frenchman who saw him in such Olympian terms, but Lafayette was also canny and hardworking and constantly honed his military skills: “I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect . . . I do not talk too much—to avoid saying foolish things—nor risk acting in a foolhardy way.”40 Lafayette opened an emotional spout deep inside the formal Washington. Although he seldom showed such favoritism, Washington made no effort to mask his fondness for Lafayette. He did not fear the young French nobleman as a future rival and was convinced of his ardent idealism. When Lafayette and his wife had a son, they decided to name him Georges Louis Gilbert Washington du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette—for short, George Washington Lafayette. Lafayette vowed that the next child would be christened Virginia, prompting Franklin to quip that Lafayette had twelve more states to go.41
THE CONTINENTAL ARMY’S RISE from the ashes of Valley Forge owed much to a newcomer, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludolf Gerhard Augustin, Baron von Steuben, a soldier who liked to decorate himself with sonorous names. While Steuben could legitimately claim wartime experience, having served as a Prussian captain during the Seven Years’ War and on the military staff of Frederick the Great, the baron title was bogus. When, in the summer of 1777, Franklin and Deane in Paris sent him to America, they embellished his credentials to make him more acceptable to Washington; on the spot, the unemployed captain was puffed up to the rank of a lieutenant general. He agreed to waive a salary temporarily and serve only for expenses. In late February 1778 the self-styled baron with the fleshy nose, jowly face, and uncertain command of English (he resorted to French to make himself understood) showed up at Valley Forge, where his bemedaled figure made a huge impression. “He seemed to me a perfect personification of Mars,” said one private. “The trappings of his horse, the enormous holsters of his pistols, his large size, and strikingly martial aspect, all seemed to favor the idea.”42
As he strode about the camp, trailed by his greyhound, Steuben was taken aback by the misery everywhere: “The men were literally naked . . . The officers who had coats had them in every color and make. I saw officers . . . mounting guard in a sort of dressing gown made of an old blanket or woollen bedcover.”43 Well versed in military practice, Steuben writhed at the unsanitary conditions; horse carcasses rotted near men preparing food, and sick men mingled with the healthy. He instituted many necessary reforms, such as having latrines dug at least three hundred feet away from huts, then promptly filled and abandoned after four days of use.
Steuben’s advent came at an auspicious time. After the widespread fatalities at Valley Forge and the tremendous attrition among officers, Washington was nervous as he contemplated a resumption of fighting in the spring. Two hundred to three hundred officers had resigned since the summer. Washington needed a tough drillmaster like Steuben to instill discipline and ready his army for combat. Unlike the British, whose units moved in brisk, marching steps, the Continental Army had no uniform methods. Washington had long admired an army manual written by Frederick the Great, Instructions to His Generals, which may have predisposed him to value Steuben’s advice. Schooled in European courts, Steuben stooped to sometimes unctuous flattery with Washington, telling him that “your Excellency is the only person under whom (after having served under the King of Prussia) I could wish to pursue an art to which I have wholly given up myself.”44
As he introduced professionalism into this motley army, the mercurial Prussian performed wonders. Washington started out by assigning one hundred men to him to be trained for his headquarters guard; he accomplished it so expertly that Washington soon sent him more. Steuben taught the men new skills, including how to wield bayonets. “The American soldier, never having used this arm, had no faith in it,” recalled Steuben, “and never used it but to roast his beefsteak.”45 All day long he drilled men on the broad, open parade ground at the center of the encampment, teaching them to march and wheel in formation, to switch from line to column and back to line. All the
while he tossed off a storm of profanities in French, English, and German and galloped about in “whirlwinds of passion.”46 Steuben was foul-mouthed and colorful, and the men were charmed by their strangely flamboyant new drillmaster.
With editorial assistance from John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton, Steuben began to compile his famous “blue book,” an instruction manual for drills and marches that gave new precision to the infantry. This booklet was so well done that it remained in use until the Civil War. Thrilled with his ersatz baron, Washington hailed him as a “gentleman of high military rank, profound knowledge, and great experience in his profession.”47 In another letter, he allowed his personal affection to peep through. “I regard and esteem the baron as an assiduous, intelligent, and experienced officer.”48 Washington always felt special gratitude to Steuben for helping to rescue the army that winter. When he later drafted a brief evaluation of him, he described him thus: “Sensible, sober, and brave; well acquainted with tactics and with the arrangement and discipline of an army. High in his ideas of subordination, impetuous in his temper, ambitious, and a foreigner.”49
That winter the projected shortage of soldiers led Washington to introduce another significant change in policy. In January 1778 Brigadier General James Mitchell Varnum of Rhode Island asked the unthinkable of the Virginia planter: the right to augment his state’s forces by recruiting black troops. “It is imagined that a battalion of Negroes can be easily raised there,” he assured Washington.50 Washington knew this was an incendiary idea for many southerners. Nevertheless, desperate to recruit more manpower, he gave his stamp of approval, telling Rhode Island’s governor “that you will give the officers employed in this business all the assistance in your power.”51 The state promised to free any slaves willing to join an all-black battalion that soon numbered 130 men. Massachusetts followed Rhode Island’s lead in enlisting black soldiers, and in Connecticut, slave masters were exempt from military service if they sent slaves in their stead. That August a census listed 755 blacks as part of the Continental Army, or nearly 5 percent of the total force. Later in the war Baron Ludwig von Closen, attached to the French Army, said of Washington’s men, “A quarter of them were Negroes, merry, confident, and sturdy.” This estimate sounds grossly exaggerated. Closer to the mark was the Frenchman’s unstinting praise for these self-confident black soldiers, saying they made up three-quarters of a Rhode Island regiment, “and that regiment is the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in its maneuvers.”52
Even as the American Revolution broadened George Washington, he had to reconcile his changed outlook with his private decisions as a slave owner. It seems more than coincidental that, in the aftermath of approving the black Rhode Island battalion, he signaled to Lund Washington a momentous shift at Mount Vernon: henceforth he wouldn’t sell slaves against their will. Until this point Lund preferred selling slaves at public auctions to fetch the highest price. But in early April, upon learning of the new policy, Lund reported back to Washington that two slaves put up for sale had balked at leaving, binding his hands. One slave, Phillis, “was so alarmed at the thoughts of being sold that the [prospective purchaser] cou[l]d not get her to utter a word of English, therefore he believed she cou[l]d not speak.”Lund drew the moral quite starkly for Washington, saying that “unless I was to make a public sale of those Negroes and to pay no regard to their being willing or not, I see no probability of sell[in]g them.”53 On August 15 Washington transmitted a still more revolutionary statement to Lund. While discussing possible land purchases in the Northern Neck, he referred to his slaves and made the astounding parenthetical statement “(of whom I every day long more and more to get clear of ).” 54 Still, he would not figure out how to banish slavery from Mount Vernon until the end of his life.
AS THE WEATHER WARMED and spring beckoned, Washington decided to honor his men for their hardy resilience during their long winter trial. He issued resounding paeans to the freed slaves and former indentured servants, farmers and shopkeepers, who made up his army: “The recent instance of uncomplaining patience during the scarcity of provisions in camp is a fresh proof that they possess in an eminent degree the spirit of soldiers and the magnanimity of patriots.” His soldiers had won the “admiration of the world, the love of their country, and the gratitude of posterity!”55 To show he meant business, Washington issued a gill of rum or whiskey to every man. The food situation started to improve in mid-February, and in March Washington looked forward to putting twelve thousand well-trained men in the field, even though three thousand were still disabled by smallpox and other diseases.
No matter how much Baron von Steuben sharpened the army’s skills, it seemed unlikely ever to defeat the enemy without a foreign ally to neutralize British sea power. Washington had long doubted that anything other than covert aid would come from France, which had secretly supplied arms to America through a fictitious trading company. He could never decide whether French aid was a rope with which to hang the British or a leash to restrain the Americans. Significantly those Americans, such as Washington and Hamilton, who had direct contact with French officers retained the deepest skepticism about their motives. To guarantee the flow of munitions from France, Washington had tolerated the pretensions of a steady stream of French officers. Lafayette was the person best positioned to promote this strategic alliance. At a critical moment during the so-called Conway Cabal, the marquis had reminded Congress that George Washington personified America for the Court of Versailles and couldn’t be replaced without doing grave damage to the sub-rosa French alliance.
Even as the Continental Army huddled by fires at Valley Forge, Benjamin Franklin pulled off a magnificent diplomatic feat in the opulent ministries of Paris. On February 6 France recognized American independence through a pair of treaties: the first granting French goods most-favored-nation status in America, and the second committing the French to a military alliance. In the splendid halls of Versailles, Franklin was now addressed not as the representative of thirteen colonies but as an emissary of the United States. In getting a monarchy to bestow its blessings upon an upstart republic, he had won a staggering achievement.
In late April Washington received unofficial word of the French alliance and fully realized its vast significance. At the news, Lafayette gave Washington—the man nobody touched—a double-barreled French kiss on both cheeks. Washington was exultant as tears of joy welled up in his eyes. “I believe no event was ever received with a more heartfelt joy,” he informed Congress.56 For Washington, the French treaties gave proof that heaven had indeed smiled upon the United States. As he told his troops, in orotund prose, “It having pleased the Almighty ruler of the Universe propitiously to defend the cause of the United American States and finally, by raising us up a powerful friend among the princes of the earth, to establish our liberty and independence upon lasting foundations, it becomes us to set apart a day for gratefully acknowledging the divine goodness.”57
On May 6, with his fondness for pageantry, George Washington staged a celebration of the French treaties, beginning with mustering brigades at nine A.M. The treaties were solemnly read aloud, followed by the firing of thirteen cannon. The infantry then fired their muskets in sequence, a feu de joie that swept the double rows of soldiers, who chanted with gusto, “Long Live the King of France.”58 French officers were embraced everywhere. Steuben showed off the crack precision of his men, who strutted smartly before a beaming Washington. As a reward, Steuben was appointed inspector general with the rank of major general. “Through it all,” John Laurens told his father, Washington “wore a countenance of uncommon delight.”59 This was more than a celebration of the French treaties; it was a day of thanksgiving for surviving the horrid winter. In a dreamlike transformation, the officers now partook of a bountiful alfresco dinner. “Fifteen hundred persons sat down to the tables, which were spread in the open air,” said General Johann de Kalb. “Wine, meats, and liquors abounded, and happiness and contentment were impressed on eve
ry countenance.”60 Washington even played cricket with younger officers. When he rode off contentedly at five o’clock, his men clapped their hands, cheered “Long live George Washington!” and twirled a thousand hats in the air.61 Washington and his aides kept stopping and looking back, sending huzzahs in return.
It was Washington’s nature to ponder the darker side of things, and that night he sent out special patrols to guard the camp, lest the enemy try to exploit the festivities, as Washington had done with the Hessians on Christmas Night in 1776. The sudden turn of events both emboldened him and made him cautious. Although he thought the French alliance would tip the scales and that things were now “verging fast to a favorable issue,” he fretted that this bonanza might breed overconfidence.62 In the short run, although it yielded no immediate benefits, the French alliance was an immense tonic to American spirits. Not until midsummer would France be officially at war with England, and in the meantime the Continental Army fended as best it could against a newly alarmed British Empire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Long Retreat
THE FIRST CASUALTY the French alliance claimed was General William Howe, who informed his troops that spring of his imminent departure for England after a winter of fun and revelry in Philadelphia. He was replaced by General Henry Clinton, who at first glance scarcely projected a heroic image. A lonely widower, Clinton was a short man with a low, balding brow and dark eyebrows; in one image, his hooked nose and large jaw looked much too massive for his tiny face. The entire effect might have been unappealing, were it not for the kindly, intelligent expression in his eyes. If he could be rash, quarrelsome, and hypersensitive, Clinton also had a long and distinguished military record, including early service in a New York militia and a stint in the Coldstream Guards. For his valorous leadership at New York in 1776, he was decorated as a Knight of the Bath. Six months earlier George Washington had expressed contempt for Clinton when he referred to his “diabolical designs” in a letter to a Virginia friend.1
